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Restore Upgraded System to New Drive?

I think the hard drive on my laptop is showing early signs of failure -- nothing shows up on a scan and it claims to be healthy in Disk Management, but I'm seeing messages in Event Viewer that some files took an abnormally long time to access, and occasional hibernation failures. I haven't had a hard drive failure since 2005, so I guess I'm due ...

I use File History, and as I type I'm making a System Image backup as well. The thing is, this machine (bought in early 2014) came with Win8.1 and I took the free upgrade to WIn10 a couple of years ago. I'm still (more by oversight/laziness than anything) paying for the retailer's extended warranty. If I get a replacement drive through that, I guess it'll be the original 2013 factory image. How much of a pain is it going to be to get the system back to its current state starting from there? Will my Win10 license even be valid on a new drive?

Alternatively, is it possible to restore File History files to a completely new system? Or would I be better off dumping my personal folders as-is to a separate drive? (Cloud backup isn't an option for more than a small subset of my files, as I'm on ADSL with <1Mbps upload bandwidth. I have about 0.5 Tb of work and personal files on this machine.)

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You could install Macrium reflect free to create an image then restore said image to the new hard drive. You have to create a MR boot disk which you use to restore the image on the new drive/disk.https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

@britechguy Thanks, that's good to know. (I'm slightly worried that the retailer would just offer me a reconditioned machine with a different motherboard, which would cause me so many other problems I might turn them down and simply replace the drive myself.)

@Goddess_Bastet Thanks. Is that better than using the built-in system image facility?

2. Detected Drives will list the HDDs and SSDs found. Place a check mark in the drive box you want to run the scan on. This should be the drive that has the operating system installed on it, this is usually C: drive.

3. You will see Basic Tests toolbar above Detected Drives, move the mouse pointer over this to open the test options. Please click on Long Generic Test

4. This will start the scan. When the scan is complete you will see the result under Test Status , please post the results in your topic.

5. The test will indicate either Pass or Fail. Post the results of the scan in your topic.

6. Click on Help, then click on View Log File. If the scan failed take a screen shot of the Log File and post it in your topic.

Please run chkdsk /r, or chkdsk /f if you are using a SSD.

To run chkdsk /r you will need to open the Elevated Command Prompt. The easiest way to do this is to press the Windows key and the X key. A menu will open with the option Command Prompt (Admin), click on this.

You will see a window similar to the one below.

When the Elevated Command Prompt opens copy and paste chkdsk /r in the Command Prompt, if this is a SSD you do not want to run the /r switch, you will want to use chkdsk /f then press Enter.

You will receive the message "CHKDSK cannot be run because it is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? <Y/N>".

Type in Y and press Enter.

This will take a while to run, please be patient and allow it to complete the scan. Do not stop this scan as this can damage your operating system.

@dc3, thanks, I just did the scan from the disk properties menu. I ran the SeaTools Long Generic test overnight and it was a Pass.

I'm actually starting to think that it may not be a hardware problem at all, just the Windows Search engine being flaky, as I noticed very similar warnings on my other machine. I'll do the other scan tonight.